Hands On: Meteos

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Was Tetris ever this good?

By Anoop Gantayat

We could've started this article by saying "it's like Tetris, except...," but we won't. Meteos deserves better. Sure, we could easily explain it by using something like "it's like Tetris, except," but then you'd probably not give it the attention it deserves. Having experienced it first hand at Nintendo's Nintendo World Touch! DS event, Meteos deserves a lot of attention.

Here's a recap if you haven't been keeping up with this game. Developed by Q Entertainment, with production by former Sega producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi and design by ex Nintendo HAL Laboratories' director Masahiro Sakurai (he also came up with the idea in the first place), Meteos is a puzzle game with a particularly interesting background story. The planet Meteos has started exploding, and meteors are showering down on your planet. Using the DS stylus, you must send the meteors back into space.

The meteors take the form of multi-colored blocks which fall from above in what looks like a Tetris-like playfield. The game begins with a clear playfield, although it quickly begins to fill up with falling pieces, which come falling down one at a time rather than in groups. As the player, you take over once the pieces have fallen. By tapping a piece with the stylus, you can grab onto it and move it up and down, rearranging it within its column (you can only move pieces vertically). Your goal is to line up three or more like pieces horizontally, which then turn into a rocket and blast off into space, carrying with them anything that happens to be above.

Once a group of pieces has started launching into space, your job isn't finished. Depending on the amount of junk above the rocket pieces, the rocket may not be able to reach escape velocity and the group will come falling back down. While the group is in the air, you'll have to go back in, rearrange blocks, and launch smaller pieces.

This is definitely one of those puzzle experiences that needs to be played to fully grasp. There seems to be a lot more to the experience than we've described, involving special pieces and different rocket speeds depending on color. There's also a targeting system of some form where you can highlight two pieces; we're didn't have a chance to see what this does.

And then there's all the stuff that's taking place on the top screen. The top screen shows a view of outerspace, where asteroids are seen launching back into space alongside a tiny diagram showing your puzzle board from afar. We're not sure if this has anything to do with the game, although we weren't actually paying much attention to it because we were so involved in the action below.

Meteos, in addition to being a fresh concept for the puzzle genre, also stands out from the rest of the DS pack due to its sound. If you wanted evidence of the DS's sound capabilities, you'll need only pick up this game. Blasting asteroids back into space is made all the more enjoyable with a disco soundtrack in the background, which is topped off by chimes whenever you string together launches. Nintendo and publisher Bandai actually had the game set up with ear-muff style headphones, surely a sign that you're playing something with Mizuguchi's branding.

Our few minutes with Meteos proved to be an intense experience that we want a whole lot more of as soon as possible. Thankfully, Meteos is a launch title for the DS in Japan. We'll definitely be picking it up on day one.